I'm on a low dose and in addition to addiction, am also using it to help with anxiety.

For the first week, I only used .5mg/day and then on days 8 and 9, I added another .25mg about 8 hours later because I metabolize very fast and felt the .5mg was wearing off too quickly. For 9 days, I had almost a total eradication of anxiety, zero cravings and my mood was lifted and balanced nearly perfectly... I cannot stress how great this feeling was but then yesterday happened...

I took my normal .5mg dose and it felt a bit stronger than normal, I actually felt a mild euphoria but within an hour or so, that euphoria turned into almost a dysphoric state... anxiety began creeping in pretty heavily and I started to get a bit nauseous. It came time to take my 2nd dose and I had decided the day before (and this was discussed with my doc) to raise both doses to .5mg, my gut feeling was not to dose but I wanted to stick to the plan and dosed it anyways. Everything went completely south from there. A few hours later, I found myself in a deeper state of anxiety then I can recall having been in in so long, I was extremely nauseous and could barely eat. Dysphoria is the only word I can think of to describe this place I was in. It was truly terrible feeling, both mentally and physically. Eventually I just had to take a small amount of Valium (again, the valium is another thing my doc is aware of) and go to bed several hours earlier than I normally do.

I woke up today with what I've deemed over the years an "anxiety hangover" that only happens after intense days/nights of anxiety. It's just a very strange feeling. I took my first dose of .5mg and felt OK, but the effects I got were NOTHING like I have been getting for the first 9 days. I still had a lot of anxiety and a bit of nausea today, it was just on a lighter scale than yesterday. I couldn't bring myself to take a 2nd dose of any milligram. I plan on calling my Doc and speaking to him about this but needed to write this down on here also.

It honestly feels like my Subs just did a 180 on me out of nowhere! And all of the amazingly positive effects I was getting just vanished and a few negative ones have creeped in also. I feel like I'm losing my mind because this does not make any sense at all to me.

This happened to me a few months after being prescribed suboxone. I never felt very euphoric from it, nor did it help my anxiety. But I noticed that as I went on a higher dose (from 4mg a day on the street to 16mg a day under my doctors care) I can only explain the way I felt as dysphoric. My anxiety went through the roof and I ended up in the emergency room convinced I was having a heart attack or dying. The worst panic attack I've ever had. I couldn't even walk, my chest & whole body hurt so bad. My boyfriend at the time had to carry me to the car & he was forced to drive (he didnt have his license & id never usually have him drive) cuz I could do nothing but wriggle in pain. I was convinced I was dying and the er doc said I was probably having a panic attack. I didn't believe him, but 3mgs of ativan later I was totally fine. So scary.

I would say stick with the dose you originally felt OK on. It seems like you felt worse after upping your dose? Stick to a schedule for taking the suboxone, but take less if it helps your anxiety. I recently started tapering down, I'm taking 4mg a day & my anxiety isn't great, but I felt somewhat better.

Hang in there, I know that horrible anxious feeling all too well. If you need support post here. Its helped me a lot.

Because of the different issues you have had going on from the very beginning it may be very hard for us here to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. All I can do is tell you what my gut is telling me and hope it may help. It sounds to me like it's possible you have been dosing just under the ceiling of suboxone for the first 8 or 9 days, keeping the stacking effect of the bupe from effecting you. This is why you were getting that mood lift every morning and feeling it wear off at night. The attempt to keep this feeling level, which is exactly what we should be aiming for, might have effected you negatively for some reason.

Anxiety is a tricky condition. Is it possible that the anxiousness you felt about upping your dose in the first place contributed to your anxiety attack? This is just a very weird situation, I've never heard of a person having suboxone cause an anxiety attack before unless they were completely opiate nieve and then just freaked themselves out because they were scared of overdosing. The nausea is consistent with your blood levels of bupe being brought up higher than you are used to, but it will go away as your body adjusts to the new dose.

I guess my suggestion would be to continue taking the split dose, maybe .5mg in the am and .25mg in the pm until you adjust to that dose and then go from there. I think all of these side effects will go away, the real question is can you tolerate them until they do? If it were me I would try to look at the anxiety attack as being separate from the suboxone dose until I had conclusive proof that it was caused by it. Don't psyche yourself out expecting it to happen again, causing a type of self fulfilling prophecy every day when you dose.

I hope this helps you a little bit. Believe me, I'm not at all doubting that what you say is true here. I am just hoping, for your sake, that the root of some of this is in your head and that you will have relief with the subs in the long run.

Keep us posted!

Q

_________________No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

daze... I'm sorry you experienced such a difficult issue with Suboxone. Luckily, I think, that this was just a temporary issue for myself but I greatly appreciate your response and hope things continue to improve. Who knows, maybe when/if you go lower than 4mg, the anxiety may ease up even more!

Q... Lol you're like my guardian angel of this forum, kicking sense into me left and right (I mean that in the most complimentary way possible)!

I know I have several ongoing threads in different sections of this forum but I honestly felt that it was necessary to properly convey what I have been experiencing since beginning Suboxone.

The day I wrote this post was a lot better than the day in which I thought my subs "turned on me" and after waking up the following day and reading this thread and really analyzing myself and the situation, things turned around. You are absolutely correct when you say "anxiety is a tricky condition" and in retrospect, I think the panic was my own doing but I honestly equated it with the Bupe, as my mind needed something to rationalize it. Before I had my day of total panic, I had just spent two nights with my girlfriend and friends at a cabin at Mt. Hood and although it was a lot of fun, I got around 5-6 hours of total sleep over the course of two nights. I was sleep deprived and exhausted and that alone can raise my anxiety. It was the first week that my gf and I have been living together, we still had a few things to move from her apartment to my house the day we got back actually. And, well, that has had it's own unique anxiety increasing elements to it as well. Then, as you mentioned, I was also getting anxiety just from the idea of upping my dose, especially since my anxiety was already heightened in general. Then I guess I kind of just allowed the panic to take over and there was no way to turn it around by that point.

That self fulfilling prophecy with anxiety is something I am all too familiar with and it really rang a bell when you mentioned that. Your post, as a whole, actually really helped me a lot.

Of course a few days later, I started to feel like my Bupe was wearing off sooner and my anxiety raised again (I did not blame Bupe this time though!) but after a few days of this, I realized... I was getting sick with some sort of cold/flu. And getting sick ALWAYS substantially raises my anxiety and in my experience, all opioids have seemed to last about half the duration when I am sick, so I imagine Bupe would be the same? I guess that's a whole other thread.

I've stuck with .5 when I get up and .25 eight hours later. I'm going to bump that up to .5 for both doses because .25 barely helps, but I want to wait until this bug is gone, so I can accurately gage the dose change.

What a trip this whole thing has been! And continues to be! I've gained many more pro's than con's though and even if it still takes me a little bit longer to find my most balanced dose, it will be worth it.

The beginning of bupe treatment can be very tough for many people, Happy. You aren't alone with that. For some reason it can be really tricky finding that perfect dose, and we can worry ourselves sick about those side effects until it finally levels out. Just have faith that it will, eventually, and you will be fine.

Yours was the first post I read this morning, and it really made me happy to see that you are figuring this whole thing out. Good start to the day.

Q

_________________No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Qhorsegal... I have a question I just started suboxone Monday I take 2/ 8mg strips a day and I'm really sick at my stomach all day today! Is this normal and if so why does this happen ? I Feel like I could jst fall asleep anywhere what should I do? Please help! Thanks

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